01.18.11: UPDATE

In a Station of the Metro
by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

In tomorrow's class, we will be discussing the use of images in poetry, as explained by Addonizio and Laux in The Poet's Companion. But, long before these two authors co-wrote our textbook, there was a group of poets, self-described as Imagists, who championed the primacy of the image within poetic works. The movement, whose founder and central figure was Ezra Pound and whose above poem "In a Station of the Metro" most poets and poetry scholars consider to be a prime example of an Imagist poem, established three main tenets upon which their writing stemmed. They are as follows:

I. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.

II. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.

III. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

To wit, I would like you to thoroughly consider, both in the poems we read for class and the poems you write for class, the ramifications of these tenets and how they might operate in conjunction with Addonizio and Laux's chapter on images. Likewise, you should also ask yourself how Pound's poem functions relative to writing prompt 8 on page 81 of TPC that you were to complete for tomorrow's class session.